Help - Can anybody recommend a Data Recovery Service?

[Wayland]

I have a Raid 1 system in my computer that has failed.

Could not recognise either disk so I changed the raid controller and it said it had rebuilt the array successfully but most of the the information on the disk does not seem to be there.

I think I need a data recovery service or is software worth looking at?

 

[giancarlo]

Bad news mate

I had a similar problem happen but on an external drive..
I used this software to restore it and it did a decent enough job, I copied it all over to another drive and most of it seemed to be there

"EasyRecovery™ Professional"
http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/

My friend had a similar issue with his Mac drive and it sorted that out too.

If its really important then you might want to try a data recovery place, but they are very expensive and if you're going to send it to one you'd probably best not try and fix it yourself with any recovery tools first.

Hope it works mate

 

[Toadflax]

Professional recovery services can be VERY expensive - you may be talking a couple of hundred pounds just to get a quote - so we don't bother. I have used one or two of the disk scanning tools that can recover deleted /lost files but can't remember their names. A google search should bring up a few. Many of them allow a free download which will tell you what would be recovered but you then have to pay for the full product. I have had good results from products that cost £30-40. It's probably worth trying demo versions of a few of them as they can give quite different results.

I'm on this now I'm always telling people - make sure you take regular backups. I'm s0rry if you haven't done this, I'm not trying to get at you, but the more I can get this message across to people, the better. I run a network of 250 PCs and 20 servers and I'm always telling people to take backups. I've had students in tears as they have lost months of work after their laptop disk failed - but more often than not there's nothing I can do.

So anyone who reads this: MAKE SURE YOU TAKE DECENT BACKUPS.



Geoff

 

[andyn]

EasyRecovery software may help a bit, never tried it on a RAID controller tho, so not sure if they support it. Pro RAID recovery is expensive, probably looking at about £500+

I take it that you have no other backups other than the mirror?

Also when you replaced the RAID controller did you use the same make and model?

 

[Wayland]

I take it that you have no other backups other than the mirror?

Also when you replaced the RAID controller did you use the same make and model?

Some was backed up but not all. I seem to have lost a lot of photographs. The idea of using the mirror raid was to be fail safe but It never occurred to me it would be the card that failed.

I tried to get the same controller but it was a generic cheapo and I couldn't find another like it.

The frustrating thing is I had not long moved the files onto this from a raid 0 because I thought having them on a striped array was a really bad idea. That one's still working perfectly.

The replacement was an Adaptec one and it took a long time on the rebuild so I hoped it was doing the job but when I opened the disk in Windows there was one folder and three files visible, nothing else.

Since then I can't even open the raid, it's listed as degraded.

 

[Dr Onion]

I'll offer my services and attempt this for you if you wish - just send me the disks and raid controller and I will try and recover the data for you. I will task one of my guys with this as a special project.

I will not be offended if you do not wish to send me your gear since you do not know from Adam but the offer is there with no strings attached and we've had reasonable success whenever our servers die! (We do have other backups but it's a useful exercise nonetheless!)

Cheers

Dr O

 

[andyn]

Gary it won't help now, BUT....

...if you have an adaptec card now then, and have enough disks and space in your box, then have your Operating System on a set of mirrored disks and then put 3 (or more, depending on how much storage you require) disks together in a striped RAID 5 array and use that for data storage. Or if your card supports it, use RAID 5EE as it speeds things up a little.

Really hope you manage to get your photos back.

 

[gregorach]

I realise that this is now after the horse has bolted so-to-speak, but if you've got a RAID 1 array and the controller goes down, you can just unplug one of the drives and use it separately. It doesn't need to be attached to a RAID controller or part of a mirror set to be read. At least that way you've got a drive with your data on it.

 

[Wayland]

I realise that this is now after the horse has bolted so-to-speak, but if you've got a RAID 1 array and the controller goes down, you can just unplug one of the drives and use it separately. It doesn't need to be attached to a RAID controller or part of a mirror set to be read. At least that way you've got a drive with your data on it.

 

[gregorach]

Maybe I should've just kept my mouth shut...

 

[Wayland]

Don't worry mate I've got a nice soft spot on the wall just for such occasions.

 

[andyn]

If the drive is showing as degraded and hasn't actually finished rebuilding the mirror then the mirrored disk may still hold the old information.

It may be worth trying Dunc's suggestion and attaching the secondary disk to a non RAID sata/IDE connection and trying to boot from it. Generally speaking performance will be damn awful but you may be lucky?

EDIT...just read in your first post it said it rebuilt it first time round. Maybe not then.

 

[Tadpole]

I have a Raid 1 system in my computer that has failed.

Could not recognise either disk so I changed the raid controller and it said it had rebuilt the array successfully but most of the the information on the disk does not seem to be there.

I think I need a data recovery service or is software worth looking at?

I've used software to recover and over written disk, it's called rstudio , I recovered 98% if the files automatically, and the remaining 2% all I had to do was rename them from $hatever.jpg to whatever.jpg and they were ok. I've never used it on RAID drive, but with version 4 (according to the bunf) you can
Not sure if that is any help, but its here

 

[Glen]

Could not recognise either disk so I changed the raid controller and it said it had rebuilt the array successfully but most of the the information on the disk does not seem to be there.

It sounds like you were using the raid as the boot/system disk but best to let us know as strateries for possible recovery might vary, also what file system it was using.

Various RAID configs should only be considered as fault tolerance rather than real fail safe as if garbage gets written to the disk all you can recover is garbage.

With Raid1 and a dodgy controller I would have said best way would have been to try running it up 1 disk at a time as its just possible the writes to one might be clean before the controller finally went down. Worth trying now but to be honest I think it's probably too late since the first rebuild said sucessful.

Worth thinking about in future is using something like a Bufallo USB 500GB Drivestation at <£80 and Robocopy to back your data files to it, first time it may take a long time but after that incremental ones will be quick and it could always be moved to another working computer.

 

[Neanderthal]

So anyone who reads this: MAKE SURE YOU TAKE DECENT BACKUPS.

And make sure that you can Restore your data.

I've heard some Nightmare stories about backups that couldn't be restored.

If you can't restore your backups you might as well not bother changing the tapes and go home a bit early.

Wayland

If you can 'Ghost' one disc to a spare you can use that to try recovery options without causing more problems with the original.

Stu

 

[Jodie]

Can I just back up all the files on a few of those USB pen drive / memory stick
devices and be done with it or should I be buying a proper back up thingy?

I've got a Maplin right across the road from my office so acquiring new gadgets
isn't a problem

 

[Tadpole]

Can I just back up all the files on a few of those USB pen drive / memory stick
devices and be done with it or should I be buying a proper back up thingy?

I've got a Maplin right across the road from my office so acquiring new gadgets
isn't a problem

if they are good enough for the NTSB, FAA, I think they are good enough for a few photographs. I've had a 256mb kingston usb flash drive for two and a half years, it's been dropped (countless times )rained on, got muddy, dropped some more got soaking wet, banged against the door frame thousands of times (its on my key chain) never a problem, 100% of the data 100% of the time. a 2gb one is less than a tenner in some places. (amazon really sting you for postage so I'd look around)

 

[Toadflax]

Can I just back up all the files on a few of those USB pen drive / memory stick
devices and be done with it or should I be buying a proper back up thingy?

I've got a Maplin right across the road from my office so acquiring new gadgets
isn't a problem

My preference for backups at home is to write to CDs or DVDs once a week. I have a set of rewritable ones that I cycle round and reuse, and on occasions write to a non-rewritable one as a long term archive, as I have known rewritable ones to become corrupted. CD/DVD writers and media are pretty cheap nowadays. And I store the backups in another room in the house, so if someone broke in and pinched the PC there's a good chance they won't take my backups as well.

USB sticks are, IMHO, OK, but they are potentially corruptable, like floppy disks, when files are added so I personally wouldn't rely on them as my primary source of backups.


Although unfortunate for Wayland, it's quite funny in a way that a Viking is talking to us about RAID systems! (This is meant in good humour ).


Geoff

 

[Jodie]

I suppose I could probably fit more stuff on CDs / DVDs than pen drives (obviously
depends on the volume of the unit of course) but I think I've got a 40 or 60GB hard
disk and I'd hate to lose it so I suppose I really ought to think about this but could
make a start by saving first of all the files that I'd cry if I lost

Not actually sure that my disk writer works - it managed a couple of DVDs and
then refused and I've never bothered with it since. It plays them fine though.

Big fan of pen drives - compact and bijou and all that sort of thing.

Thanks